Reference no: EM131856992

Knowledge Assessment

1. What is innovation?

2. Outline the differences between Incremental and radical innovation

3. What are Key Performance Indicators and how can they be used to monitor performance?

4. Outline the reasons for supplier evaluation. Why would businesses benefit from undertaking and evaluation of their supply chain?

5. Describe 2 performance management tools and their applications.

6. What would you expect to find in a contingency plan?

7. Describe 2 risk mitigation strategies.

8. Innovation has been identified as the last competitive advantage available to organisations in a turbulent and hyper-competitive global market. Therefore, a number of key drivers are needed to encourage and foster innovation in organisations. What do these include?

9. Read the following article:

1. Strategy for Innovation
A clear and articulated strategy for innovation must be developed and accepted to encourage innovation across the organisation. Strategy development first requires an understanding of the business and its environment, and should involve stakeholder input to ensure buy-in across the organisation. Innovative companies have a clear vision and core values that encourage the pursuit of organisational objectives, including innovation initiatives.

2. Innovation Leadership throughout the Organisation Commitment and support from top management is the cornerstone of successful innovation.

Management influence is necessary to overcome the barriers to successful change, which innovators often encounter. Identifying "champions" in the organisation to drive the innovation agenda can make a significant difference to innovation diffusion and adoption. Innovation champions can also provide the leadership required to stimulate innovation throughout the organisation. Effective change management will ensure that improvements will be easily implemented. When top management is pro-active and becomes a catalyst for change, the organisation has a better opportunity to adopt an innovative culture.

3. Culture and People
Establishing a culture that is conducive to innovation requires building a work environment where trust, open communication and teamwork are the norm. A team is capable of significant achievements because individual abilities can be pooled towards achieving a common objective. The use of cross-functional teams helps break down the barriers by transcending the existing organisational structure. An environment that encourages participation, learning and fun allows new ideas to be generated and improvements implemented. Harnessing the creativity of the workforce forms a critical component of an innovative culture. Therefore, professional development of employees should include skills development in creativity tools and techniques. Other characteristics of an innovative culture include, tolerance of ambiguity, challenging the status quo, asking "Why?" and not being afraid to speak your mind.

4. Tolerance of Risk
The innovation process generally has an element of risk since any change involves uncertainty. Some organisations are risk averse and usually struggle to become innovative. Organisations that incorporate a higher level of risk tolerance in their business processes are more successful in adopting an innovative climate. The downside of risk is failure. However, "failure is not built on success: success is built on failure". Sagacious or calculated risk taking is therefore the preferred option, because this implies that outcomes, consequences and contingencies have been considered in advance.

5. Open Communication
The existence of free and open communication channels is favourable to innovation because it provides the opportunity for ideas and information to be relayed throughout the organisation. It is also important that, in addition to vertical communication, an organisation maintains lateral relationships between functional areas to break down any silos. Collaborative information technology solutions, such as Microsoft Sharepoint or Lotus Notes, encourage information sharing throughout the organisation and provide a repository for knowledge and ideas.

6. Flexible Operating Structures
Establishing adaptive organisational structures, which are characterized as flat, organic and cross- functional, is a key characteristic of innovative organisations. For example, 3M is a large global company that operates small autonomous cross-functional business units to encourage innovation and participation. In an organic structure job definitions are flexible, and both vertical and lateral communication flows exist. Power and authority are generally shared across team members.

7. New Ideas and Opportunities
The continuous flow and capture of new ideas provides organisations with a source of new products and services, product improvements, and novel processes that contribute to the organisation's survival and growth. Creativity is therefore an important key driver of innovation by providing new ideas and new ways to solve organisational problems. Organisations also need to adopt a formal
ideas management process to capture, develop, evaluate, protect and implement ideas and suggestions, which form the foundation of new opportunities that satisfy needs and wants in the market.

If organisations and their leaders readily embrace the concepts of innovation and successfully implement innovation strategies and processes, they would have made the first steps towards achieving growth and sustainability in the hyper-competitive global arena. Creativity is a skillset that, despite popular belief, can actually be learnt and nurtured within an organisation. Senior managers and leaders need to take responsibility to foster an internal culture that recognizes and supports creativity and innovation to ensure they sustain their competitive advantage in the marketplace.

For an organisation you have access to, provide examples of the organisations implementation of each point, i.e. strategy for innovation, innovation leadership throughout the organisation, culture and people, etc.

10. Research and describe in detail, a range of measurement metrics that can be utilised in conjunction with variance analysis to determine performance and trends within an organisation (Note: this is an essay question).

Task 1 - Innovation and Continuous Improvement Project

Using an organisation you have access to:

(a) Determine those organisational systems and processes most critical to its success. Determine also, the performance standard required of the critical system/s or processes and any appropriate benchmarks or benchmarking opportunities. Standards are typically expressed quantitatively (in terms of numbers) to ensure that performance expectations are clear and easily measured.

Quantitative standards are usually expressed in terms of one or a combination of the following dimensions:

- Physical or productivity - quantities of products/services, numbers of customers/clients, etc
- Budget or Monetary - ROI, break-even point, liquidity, labour costs, materials costs, sales revenue, gross profit, etc
- Time - scheduling, critical path timeframe, process time, waiting time (queuing), etc

Qualitative (subjective) standards also play an important role although performance is much harder to measure. These may include 'qualified' personnel, 'team players', 'appropriate dress', 'satisfaction', 'expectations', and the like. Determine also whether these are reflected in the organisation's strategic or department/unit business plans. If you don't have easy direct access to an organisation, interview a manager in an organisation you know.

(b) Use the appropriate assessment tools and associated benchmarks to analyse the performance of all critical processes within the supply or value chain of one organisational sub-system (ie, Marketing, Finance, HR, Operations, Procurement, etc). Describe the processes and discuss your own process of analysis in undertaking this task. Was performance variation identified? If positive variation (achieved/overachieved), is there a recognition mechanism used by the organisation to ensure motivation? If negative variation (under achievement), what corrective action is recommended to the organisation's sub-system or its processes? How could innovation or continuous improvement be used to address variations and ensure efficiency and competitive advantage?

(c) Determine the changing macro and market trends that most affect it. Thinking of its predicament, how could innovation be used as an opportunity to redesign or realign systems/processes and gain competitive advantage where such environmental influences are at play?

(d) Using the analysis of the performance of the organisation's sub-system processes, together with recommendations made, contact a specialist in order to identify whether there is a technological or e-business opportunity. Provide some examples of opportunities in the following memo field together with a summary of the costs and associated benefits and the reasons for the opportunity.

(e) Based on the particular environmental factors at play, outline the need for the implementation of an innovation system within the organisation. The system is to encapsulate an ideas management process, linked to an appropriate reward and recognition strategy that reflects the acceptance of risk informed failure (organisational values). The innovation system is also to be linked to an appropriate
change process. Your paper needs to be motivating enough to instil a sense of urgency (as Kotter suggests) within your readers and gain their commitment. To support this, you may like to include a section on any impacting environmental and competitive forces.

(f) Discuss how you would advance the development of an organisational learning and a creative climate/culture for the organisation? As part of your response, address the notion of 'failure' acceptance as critical within the innovation process.

(g) Research a couple of reward and recognition systems associated with innovative and entrepreneurial organisations. How do they acknowledge new ideas and reward entrepreneurial behaviour? Is there some commonality? Do cultural differences impact on the type of system?

(h) Following a review of two core organisational processes, write a short comparative report which includes the risk analyses and cost/benefit analyses together with recommendations for action.

(i) Document an ideas management and culling process appropriate to the organisation. Using an appropriate presentation medium (i.e. Powerpoint, flowchart, diagrams, model, text, etc), explain how the process works to a stakeholder group of your choice.

(j) You are to develop an initial transition plan for your innovation that recognises people's needs and the impact of change on them and the business. It will need to contain objectives, timeframes, measures and a communication plan to help manage the implementation. The supplied transition plan template can be used as a guide in developing your own plan. Ensure that your plan is representative of the organisation's current situation and the nature of the innovation you intend to implement.

(k) Identify key areas of risk in the implementation of your innovation and their effect on the transition process.

Develop a contingency plan that encompasses all of the key areas of risk you identified. Your plan should include the scenario, the trigger (date and/or condition) together with the action that will be undertaken.

(l) Investigate and analyse an implementation failure. In the following memo field, briefly document the innovation and the reason for failure together with the lessons to be learned.

(m) As a memo, and in no more than 200 words, write a communique to your key stakeholders providing feedback on an implemented innovation and the benefits they will derive from it. Include appropriate references to the idea generator, implementation process and the project team. Your final report must include all parts (a) to (m).